Overview

In recent decades, African states have developed an impressive infrastructure for training their peacekeepers. In addition, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and associated areas of conflict resolution have become significant areas of employment. Marco Jowell has spent a decade working in peacekeeping training in East Africa - initially as one of the foreign 'Technical Advisers' at the Peace Support Operations (PSO) training centre in Kenya, the International Peace Support Training Centre (IPSTC) and subsequently as a strategic adviser to the Rwanda Peace Academy. Using first-hand experience, he considers how military forces from a variety of African states - with great differences in history, language and political systems and with militaries with different cultures and capabilities - can conduct complicated multinational peacekeeping operations. He shows how regional peacekeeping training centres provide an environment for African elites, predominately military, to interact with each other through shared training and experiences. This process of interaction, or socialisation, improves skills but also encourages cohesion so that future African-led missions will be managed by well-trained officers who are comfortable and willing to work within a regional or Pan-African framework. Jowell shows that part of the aim of peacekeeping training centres is to foster a Pan-African 'outward' looking ideology or disposition as well as improving technical ability. This book will be essential reading for all involved with African military and security studies and analysts of peacekeeping training and operations.

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9781784539894

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Reviews

`This fascinating study provides major insight into the world of Africa's politico-military aristocracy, underlining how peacekeeping training centres have increasingly become the centrepiece of Western-African security engagement. Marco Jowell, a former technical and strategic adviser to a number of these institutions, is uniquely placed to explain not only what is meant to happen in peacekeeping training centres but also what actually does. In piecing-together the curricula and cultures of centres across the continent, Peacekeeping in Africa demonstrates the flawed assumptions that undergird many of these organisations and the extent to which they, unintentionally, help to reify and consolidate fundamentally illiberal regional security cultures.' - Jonathan Fisher, Senior Lecturer in African Politics, University of Birmingham, `Peacekeeping is a generic term covering a variety of modes of conflict resolution. This study of the Peace Support Operations training centres in Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Ethiopia, based on the author's extensive personal testimony, shows the dangers of exploitation by patrimonial, financial and national interest. It is well researched and makes a real contribution to our understanding of an important dimension of peacekeeping'. - Professor J E Spence OBE FKC, Department of War Studies, King's College, London

`This fascinating study provides major insight into the world of Africa's politico-military aristocracy, underlining how peacekeeping training centres have increasingly become the centrepiece of Western-African security engagement. Marco Jowell, a former technical and strategic adviser to a number of these institutions, is uniquely placed to explain not only what is meant to happen in peacekeeping training centres but also what actually does. In piecing-together the curricula and cultures of centres across the continent, Peacekeeping in Africa demonstrates the flawed assumptions that undergird many of these organisations and the extent to which they, unintentionally, help to reify and consolidate fundamentally illiberal regional security cultures.' - Jonathan Fisher, Senior Lecturer in African Politics, University of Birmingham, `Peacekeeping is a generic term covering a variety of modes of conflict resolution. This study of the Peace Support Operations training centres in Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda and Ethiopia, based on the author's extensive personal testimony, shows the dangers of exploitation by patrimonial, financial and national interest. It is well researched and makes a real contribution to our understanding of an important dimension of peacekeeping'. - Professor J E Spence OBE FKC, Department of War Studies, King's College, London, `Marco Jowell's book has broken new ground in the study of global peacekeeping. This is a timely and highly welcome contribution to scholarship.' - Philip Cunliffe, Senior Lecturer in International Conflict, University of Kent

Author Information

Marco Jowell is Director of the Africa Research Group. He is a leading expert in the politics, political economy and security dynamics of East and Central Africa and holds a PhD in Politics & International Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

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